She’s imagining freedom from jealous boyfriend

Dear Carolyn: For the past 3 1/2 years I have been in a relationship with a great guy, and I’m really happy. Sure we’ve had our share of problems but what couple hasn’t?

I have a problem with other guys though. I get hit on fairly often. Usually it’s some gesture from a sleaze on the street or something I can just blow off with, “Oh, no, I have a boyfriend.” Recently, I went back to finish college, and I’ve met some great people whom I enjoy talking with, but they’re “school friends” and that’s it. I was always “one of the guys” in high school and am more comfortable talking to guys. My boyfriend doesn’t like or understand this since he doesn’t have any female friends except for his friends’ girlfriends. Also, he’s 30, I’m 21. He worries that I might meet some other punky artist like myself, closer to my age and fall for him. But he really has nothing to worry about, I love him and I would never cheat.

This past semester there was a guy in my photo class who I had a lot in common with and ended up talking to a lot. At the end of the semester, he e-mailed me this letter about how much he likes me and how he was too shy to ask me out. I feel really bad now, he’s a really nice person, very attractive, and fun to hang out with, but I have no romantic interest in him. I’m used to blowing off strangers, but here is a great person who if I was single I’d go for. What do I do? – Flattered but Unavailable

Unavailable. Yes. You mentioned that.

In several hundred words, many of which I cut or condensed, over acres of excuses preceding a question that needed no more than your last two lines. (And that anyone reading it could have answered in one: Tell him he’s great but your feelings for him aren’t romantic.)

Which means we’ve either taken a long walk through the daisies to answer an obvious question, or you won’t admit what is obviously your real concern: that you’re in a rocky relationship with a jealous, possessive guy who at 26 was scooping 17-year-olds, and you’d like to get out and feel fresh air in your lungs and discover yourself and maybe eventually date this nice guy in your class.

And if it’s not your real concern, it should be. If you need to argue your devotion to your boyfriend, the inconsequence of your admirers, and the innocence of your friendships sooo thoroughly and irrelevantly to me – a completely neutral stranger – then I can only imagine how thoroughly and often you’ve had to argue these things to your boyfriend.

This. Is. Bad. News. He doesn’t trust you, and he is never going to trust you, and it has nothing to do with your loving him enough (or not) or cheating on him (or swearing you never will) or having male friends (or not) or getting whistled at on the street (or scaring the tourists).

He’s looking for guarantees in a world that, sorry dude, doesn’t offer them, and he’s going to pressure you for them till someone breaks. Get out, now, get out while you can still breathe.